Homecoming ended early for one GDS student. The student, granted anonymity by The Augur Bit, was caught holding a vaping device in the first floor men’s bathroom by Dean of School Life Quinn Killy. According to students familiar with the events, he was promptly escorted out of the dance. The incident highlights a vaping epidemic sweeping GDS and other high schools across the country. Over the past year, vaping has become a nationwide fad both on and off campuses. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, between one and two of every ten students over the age of 15
Following two denied visa applications, GDS Chinese teacher Min Wang learned she must return to China after spending seven years in the United States. Days later, Dr. Wang learned that her case was reopened by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, allowing her to stay and teach in the U.S. pending further examination. In 2017, she filed for an EB-1A visa, which is for people with advanced degrees who have extraordinary levels of skills and talent. Just in case her visa application was denied, she filed for a secondary visa known as O-1A, which is also for people with
What we know On November 2, junior Montez McNeil found a swastika in the first-floor men’s bathroom around 1:30pm. On November 12, sophomore Josh Gaba found a swastika on the conductor’s music stand in the choir room during lunch. On November 13, members of The Augur Bit found a swastika in the first-floor men’s bathroom around 1:00pm. This one was not in the same location as the first swastika. On November 14, Katie Gibson spoke to the high school again confirming the new reports. Addressing the perpetrator in the crowd, Gibson said “you should not be at this school.” While washing his hands
On Monday, September 24, dozens of GDS students participated in a national walkout to show support for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford before she testifies against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Ford publicly came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault just days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation. Just yesterday, Deborah Ramirez came forward and accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct from their college years, which was reported in the New Yorker. The walkout was led by the 2018 Summit on Sexual Assault and Consent Team. Participants were asked to wear black to
Groups of GDS students leaving and returning to campus during lunch is a common sight. Since the end of last year, however, some students haven’t been walking to get lunch, but rather, they’ve been zipping around Tenleytown on Lime Scooters. The scooters are provided by the company Lime, formerly LimeBike, which started in 2017 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Since then, they have expanded all around the globe, with services in New York City, Los Angeles, and even Paris, France. According to Lime’s website, they were founded with the idea that “mobility can be smart, equitable and
In an environment so heavily influenced by technology today, how many spaces are designated to spending device-free time with the opportunity to receive advice from adults in the community? Administrator Bobby Asher took initiative in creating “the Den,” a space to interact with grade deans, study, and take a relaxing break from the hyper-technological environment in which we learn. “The more we can create spaces for adults and kids to be together in a less formal setting, the more likely we are to have a community where people know and trust each other,” Asher said. For a long time, the
During the 2017-2018 school year, many students and teachers advocated for a program in which students could have access to graphing calculators. Graphing calculators normally cost around $150 dollars, which is a lot of money to spend on a resource that almost every math class requires. Thus, over the summer, GDS developed a program in which every student will be granted a graphing calculator. Lee Goldman, a math teacher and one of the teachers behind the new program, explained how graphing calculators are a great teaching tool in the classroom. “They help kids see the math and are also used
As you enter school on your first day, you may wonder what changed on campus over the summer. You might observe that the school bought new furniture, like the couches they placed along the English hallway. Or, maybe you’ll realize the maintenance staff painted your favorite classroom, like the language room across from the debate office. Most likely, you’ll notice the extraneous noise and clouds of dust because, nearly five years after GDS announced it would unify their two campuses on Davenport Street, construction workers finally broke ground on the project. The process to begin construction was certainly a lengthy
The release of the 2018-2019 high school curriculum ushered in a host of new course offerings in fields ranging from history to the performing arts to innovation and technology. Perhaps the most striking change is the introduction of a new history class for sophomore students entitled African Studies Survey. The addition follows the establishment of a World History course in the 2016-2017 school year, which enacted the history department’s departure from an exclusively European History tenth grade curriculum. “The only European history in tenth grade was actually imposed on the department in 1997 by the then head of school,” said
Some people wonder how frisbees fly. Aden Stinebrickner-Kauffman is not one of these people. He could tell you about the disk’s aerodynamics. He could tell you about distorted air flow, the Bernoulli Principle, and the lift component of force vectors. He could also tell you about what it’s like to play on a professional frisbee team. Indeed, the renowned physics teacher was a professional athlete. Inspired by his sister’s success on Duke University’s frisbee team, he picked up the sport during his freshman year of college. Not too long after, the Australian (yes, he was born Down Under) started to
While many voters believe that election day takes place on the first Tuesday of November, Georgetown Day School (GDS) students know that election day for the Student Staff Council (SSC) president occurs on the first Monday of May. Beating junior Jeff Elias and sophomores Jonah Doctor-Loeb and Margaux Van-Allen, junior Shonali Palacios will succeed graduating senior Cecily Davis as the school’s student body president. Starting this year, with an amendment to the SSC Charter, SSC opened presidential elections to the public instead of holding private elections. This change established a more democratic process to get the entire school involved. Elias,
You walk into your first day of high school, everything is new: new teachers, new campus, new students. How will you get to know this school? What are its values? How will you explore and come to understand your identity and find your place in this new environment? Perhaps surprisingly, ninth grade English class can help you find answer to some of these questions. As the GDS course catalogue explains,“English 9 texts focus on journeys — both metaphorical and physical — in which the protagonists “adolesce” as they struggle toward the formation of tested and tempered identities.” One of the